Learning and Adapting - The road to Silver.

Everyone is different. We learn and educate ourselves in different ways throughout our lives. Some people have a 'natural talent' for thing's and can learn them as easy as breathing.  For others, learning certain thing's can be difficult and a struggle.  When it comes to League Of Legends (LoL) I feel I have no natural talent for this game; I need to play a champion a good number of times in order to know how they work.  When I was in the Silver league I had a lot of nice friends tell me to try out different things and  see if it would help.  I would get so frustrated as the advice they gave me didn't help.  The main reason for this was that I learned differently from the way my friends did.  Finding out how I learn and analyzing my own mistakes has helped me to become a better League player.

A new champion comes out;  I Scan over the status messages on my friends list filled with "Zed OP", "Elise Stronk" or "Faceroll with Udyr".  Purchasing the shiny-new champion, I am immediately  skeptical of the release skin it comes with (am I the only one who thinks Riot saves the good skins for later?).  I make a custom game ensuring the Annie bot is on my team and off we go.  This is only the first of my mistakes.

Mistake number one:  I never read anything - It's a bot game, so why should I read what the spell does? Oh look, Lulu can turn people into squirrels . . . ain't that cute.  So I spend the next 5 minutes laughing to myself, trying to impersonate her, while people wander past, giving me a look like they could sell me to the circus.  If you wanna know how the champion works, try reading what they do.  As simple as that sounds, I am convinced that many people miss small things like that.  Whenever I have a bad League day and look for advice, my friends say the same thing.  I've learned to play a champion over and over, to get to know them and know what they do.  Once you feel comfortable playing drafts with the champions, then why not try them in ranked if that is what you want to do?  There is always a risk of your first game with a champion in ranked; it's a whole different atmosphere, and you feel far more pressured to succeed.  Whenever a new champion is released - most recently Lucian - players have this tendency to instantly ban them, as they don't want anyone trying them out in a ranked game for the first time; players want you to give 100% in your game, and we think that's unlikely if you are playing a champion for the first time.  It's also the primary reason Riot abolished free-to-play champions within ranked games.

Once I was in champion select and had the position of mid-lane and my opposing player had selected Le Blanc.  I told my duo partner that I wasn't to sure about playing against her, but I picked Galio (he's a safe pick, in my mind, and I know how to play him) and as soon as I locked in, the Ezreal on my team started to abuse the All Chat by saying I would fail since this was my first time playing Galio in ranked.
The game starts, and I give away First Blood to Le Blanc within three minutes, which obviously made Ezreal shout about how right he was, and how much I sucked.  I then get ganked by the jungler and my stats are 0/2/0 before the five-minute mark.  "GG game is over this Galio feeding, how did he get to gold" is Ezrael's refrain; at that point, I decide to put him on ignore and continue with my game, confident in my aility to play my champ.  My stats in the end; 7/3/8, with all three deaths Le Blanc very early in the game.
When the game was over and I looked back, I realized I should have just farmed and tried not to trade with her so much early.  After I got to level 6, I was involved in a lot of team fights and on occasion killed Le Blanc as she tried to initiate on me.  But my overall mistake in that game was to listen to the Ezreal; when people keep telling you how bad you are, sometimes you start to forget they're wrong, which leads me to . . .

Mistake Number Two: Listening to flamers.  Listening to toxic players like that is like eating a piece of food that had gone bad.  At first you think, "oh it's like two days out of date, it'll be fine", but three hours later, your stomach feels like it has become a washing machine.  When I listen to someone like that I think to myself,  "great another one in ranked".  But as the poison spreads I begin to get agitated and annoyed and short-tempered.  When that happens, I miss things I wouldn't usually miss, like the jungler hiding in the brush, or if the tri-brush has been pinked or not.  I die messily because I didn't notice that bot-lane came to mid- and that just provides more fuel to add to the fire for the vicious little trolls.  By this time I am actually beginning to believe them: that I am as bad as they say, and shouldn't play.  That the reason we lost the game was solely on me.

The best advice I can give here is simply to mute and ignore the player instantly, before the poison begins to spread.  When I started doing that, I felt better overall about my ranked games and didn't feel so rubbish when I lost, as I knew I tried my best.  You will never be able to become better if you listen to people who just bring you down. 

You want to take exhaust and ignite on Blitzcrank?  Do it; you know your play-style, and you know you can make it work.  You want to go in on them level 2? Try it.  Make your own mistakes and learn from them without being ridiculed or flamed.

So in summary, here are some little tips that helped me become better at LoL.

1) Figure out how you learn.  Is it better for you to play the champ in custom a few times?  Listen to others from League?  Maybe you learn better by watching a lot of streams?

2) Read stuff.  Riot included it for a reason; I didn't notice Janna added attack damage to her shields for a long time . . . yeah . . .

3) Mute and Ignore anyone who flames you; they're not adding anything beneficial to you, and will in fact just make things worse.
4) Try things in games and learn from them; experimentation will reveal things to you you hadn't considered, for good or ill.
5) All of the above fail? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnnZtJj6LtU

 When I started to do all these things I advanced to high silver/ low Gold pretty easily.

Pad.

(The images are not made or owned by me. I put them there because they are pretty.)